First of all. NEAT camera! It looks like something Captain Kirk would use to snap pictures of the orange-skied planets he used to visit! The controls are laid out well, so that buttons and things are under one's fingers when he holds the camera, and the menu system is simple enough to use. I did not notice any loss of sharpness around the edges of the frame; the Zeiss-designed lens, mounted well away from the heat-producing CCD, probably has something to do with this. The controls permit some simple Real Camera-type manipulations: several shutter speeds, several exposure times, that sort of thing, but there aren't nearly as many tweakable settings, or as much range, as there would be in a film camera. The 505V is designed to be used as a waist-level camera, and shots taken this way should be composed with this in mind. The front of the lens is threaded for standard filters (don't recall the size offhand), obtainable at a photo store. A UV filter to protect the lens and a polarizing filter for outdoor shots of sky and clouds might be a couple of good things to consider.

As did several of the other reviewers, I have had problems getting good pictures in low-light conditions. Perhaps the CCD is not sensitive enough, or the shutter is held open too long for hand-holding, but low-light pics tend to come out blurry. The built-in flash is, of course, too close to the lens, though that's a problem with any camera whose flash is mounted right on the body. Last, the 505V is big. I've had it in some rather surprising places, but it was an effort to take it out of its case and put it back for every picture. I am considering getting a simple, compact digicam as an auxilliary adventure camera for spontaneous shots or narrow cave passages, though I do not anticipate the new camera replacing my 505.

I have bought a PCMCIA card for plugging the Memory Stick into my laptop (heh! I can mount it as a Linux filesystem and not have to touch any Windows software at all!), an extra battery, and of course, a bigger Memory Stick than the 8M one that came with the camera. I have also purchased a small Pelican case from the dive shop, so that I can get my pack wet or drop it onto hard places (or fall and land on it, as has also happened a few times), and not worry about damaging my camera. The Pelican case also fits an extra battery and as many Memory Sticks as I care to take along, and is thus a Good Thing.